Boeing’s Bad Day, Boy Scouts, ByteDance, & Bad Drones
May 8, 2024
Hello, readers – happy Wednesday! Today, we’re talking about Boeing’s tough couple of days, the invasion of Rafah, India’s elections, a cyberattack, the Boy Scouts, TikTok suing, and Amazon’s drones.
Here’s some good news: two high school seniors, Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, found a new way to prove the Pythagorean theorem by using trigonometry – a feat many mathematicians thought was impossible for decades. Also, nearly 60 years after Atlanta native and engineer Ronald Yancey became Georgia Institute of Technology’s first Black graduate, he presented his granddaughter with her diploma from the same school.
“It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.” – Voltaire
Things Are Boeing Downhill
Like a plane hitting a flock of geese after flying through a hurricane, Boeing stock took a dive yesterday, adding another bad day to an already-terrible 2024 after the Federal Aviation Administration announced that it would be investigating Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner planes. The investigation was a response to employee reports that Boeing had failed to complete required inspections on the planes, and that some employees had even falsified aircraft records for the planes. Boeing stock has dropped almost 30% since the start of 2024, reducing the company’s market cap by almost $50 billion. The FAA announced that “At the same time, Boeing is reinspecting all 787 airplanes still within the production system and must also create a plan to address the in-service fleet.”
While a Boeing executive described the falsified records as “misconduct” by lower-rung employees, multiple whistleblowers have raised questions about the company’s quality control policies developed by managers and executives. Reports have painted the picture of a company cutting corners in order to lower costs, resulting in dangerous defects hidden by management. Boeing is attempting to resuscitate its public image, but another whistleblower died last week of a quickly-spiraling MRSA infection after one other former employee was found dead of a gunshot wound in March.
Troubled Times And Troublesome Talks
Israeli forces began their long-promised ground invasion of the Palestinian city of Rafah yesterday as negotiations over a Hamas-signed ceasefire deal continue to develop. An Israeli tank brigade seized the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt as part of the offensive. Meanwhile, Israeli negotiators headed to Cairo to resume ceasefire talks with Hamas.
The ceasefire deal that Hamas officials agreed to includes three six-week phases. The first would include a ceasefire and the release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians currently being held by Israel (there are over 9,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, over 3,500 without formal charges). Israel estimates that 128 of the 250 hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 are still in Gaza, 35 of whom are presumed dead.
The second phase would see the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and more Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages. The third phase would end Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and begin the reconstruction of Gaza, which has been decimated by Israeli shelling. The main sticking points for Israel appear to be the setup of a permanent ceasefire and the full withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza. Despite the government’s lack of enthusiasm for the deal, thousands of Israelis took to the streets to put pressure on the Netanyahu regime to accept the accord.
Election Mode For Modi
- On Tuesday, India’s massive national elections entered the third of seven phases, with ballots cast in the state of Gujarat (the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi) and 10 other regions, as Modi seeks to earn a record third term in a row. According to a Reuters interview of opposition politicians, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is focusing on celebrity endorsements against opposition leaders, minority groups (including Christians), and using redrawn voting districts to leverage Hindu voters.
- Critics of the BJP predict that the party will dig deeper into its Hindu nationalist roots if it wins a supermajority in its third term. Modi and his colleagues have increasingly employed anti-Muslim rhetoric on the campaign trail recently, though recent polls show that voters are more concerned about growing inflation and flagging economic growth. We’ll just have to wait and see if that strategy will pay off (it probably will).
Where’s The Ministry Of Cyber-Defense?
- According to statements by British politicians on Tuesday, the British Ministry of Defense’s third-party payroll system was hacked by an outside group. While the M.O.D. has not specified what group might be responsible for the hack, the ministry has said that the data breach was likely orchestrated by a state – which has, of course, led British media to speculate that China was responsible.
- “The M.O.D. has acted very swiftly to take this database offline — it’s a third-party database incidentally, not one run directly by the M.O.D. — and of course, they are there to advise and provide support to those who may be concerned about the fact that this data has been breached,” said one U.K. cabinet minister. According to the M.O.D., the leak included the names and bank details of some armed service members – active and veteran – as well as a small number of addresses for some individuals.
More Mixed Nuts
- Russia confirms U.S. soldier Gordon Black arrested on theft charges, will be held until July (NBC)
- After years in a Syrian ISIS camp, a 10-person American family is back in the U.S. (NPR)
- George, South Africa: Building collapse leaves three dead and dozens trapped (CNN)
- Knife attack at Chinese hospital kills 2 and injures 21 (NBC)
- Macron’s cognac — the only thing that went down smoothly with Xi (Politico)
Scouting Out A New Future
- The Boy Scouts of America is changing its name to Scouting America, marking the organization’s first-ever name change in over a century of existence. “In the next 100 years we want any youth in America to feel very, very welcome to come into our programs,” Roger Krone, who took over last fall as president and chief executive officer, said in an interview before the announcement.
- The organization has been through some turbulence, for sure. The organization began allowing gay youth in 2013, ended its ban on gay adult leaders in 2015, and announced that girls would be accepted as Cub Scouts in 2017 and as full-blown Boy Scouts (now Scouts BSA) in 2019. Then there was the lawsuit from the Girl Scouts, and the $2.4 billion bankruptcy reorganization last year. Needless to say, a fresh start might be just what the doctor ordered.
The ByteDance Dance Begins
- ByteDance and TikTok sued Tuesday to challenge the new law that will force ByteDance to sell TikTok to a different company. The social media platform is arguing that the law, signed late last month by President Biden, violates the First Amendment rights of the 170 million American users.
- TikTok also says that the law is based on “speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation.” Congress and the White House are worried that the Chinese government could access user data, and that China is pushing propaganda on the app.
More Nuts In America
- In Berkeley Public Schools, a War Gives Rise to Unusual Tensions (NYT, $)
- Biden says antisemitism has no place in America in somber speech connecting the Holocaust to Hamas’ attack on Israel (CNN)
- Kristi Noem rejects ‘liberal plant’ claim on dog-killing tale: ‘Buck stops with me’ (Guardian)
- The Indiana governor’s race has nothing to do with state politics at all (Politico)
- New York governor regrets saying Black kids in the Bronx don’t know what a computer is (ABC)
- US company agrees to fine for hiring children to clean slaughterhouses (Guardian)
Speed Bumps For Drone Deliveries
- Big corporations have long sought to replace human workers with robots, eliminating the need for pesky things like lunch breaks, bathrooms, and sick days. Unfortunately, it looks like that hyper-efficient future is some ways away, as demonstrated by Amazon’s delivery drone program in Arizona.
- While the tech giant originally said it would roll out a same-day drone delivery program in Arizona this year, its plans are hitting a speed bump due to the drones’ inability to deal with things like heat, nightfall, and inclement weather. According to Amazon, the company’s MK30 drones can’t fly in temperatures above 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Unfortunately, daily average temperatures in one town where the drones will be tested are expected to top 104 for a three-month period during the summer – oh, and anything stronger than a light rain will ground the drones even when temps aren’t sky-high.
- Aside from being extremely finicky about uncontrollable outside conditions, the drones will also require customers to set out a giant QR code mat for the robots to drop packages on, and it’s unclear whether local customers will actually want 80-pound quadcopters whizzing through the air and dropping their packages from multiple feet up in the air.
More Loose Nuts
- The 2025 Real ID deadline for new licenses is really real this time, DHS says (USA Today)
- Nintendo to announce Switch successor in this fiscal year as profits rise (AP)
- Largest-ever marine reptile found with help from an 11-year-old girl (NPR)
- Equinox’s new fitness program aims to help you live longer (CBS)
- What are sperm whales saying? Researchers find a complex ‘alphabet’ (NPR)
